Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair. Tahir Shah
About This Quote

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin.

However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair. We all know what it’s like to be terrified – we've all felt it – and we know how we react to it: we run away, we hide.

But as Nelson Mandela points out, “to accept that you are not strong enough to endure such fear is to allow fear to win”.

Source: In Arabian Nights: A Caravan Of Moroccan Dreams

Some Similar Quotes
  1. There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first,... - John Lennon

  2. Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. - Unknown

  3. We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. - Cassandra Clare

  4. Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ..each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add... - Tennessee Williams

  5. We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life. Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes... - Maya Angelou

More Quotes By Tahir Shah
  1. My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the...

  2. Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first..but the more you...

  3. There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

  4. I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.

  5. In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.

Related Topics